Recent ruminations on my not-quite-magnum-opus "A Question of Scale" evoked some old memories on a related issue -- the question of size in artworks.
Some of the best experiences of my working life took place at my next-to-last workplace, a renowned non-profit that fundraises for children's health. As the assistant to the VP responsible for the fundraising team, I was the designated hitter to support the exec team's twice-yearly off-site strategic planning sessions.
I don't think there will ever again be a conjunction of stars like that group -- three brilliant, funny, off-the-wall executives and an inspiring facilitator whose attitude towards the capital-C corporate world was expressed in her signature wardrobe of Birkenstocks and LL Bean flannel shirts. Well, I'm semi-brilliant myself and quickly got a reputation with this crew for not only being able to See the Big Picture but to translate their effervescence into orderly notes. One day, with just a touch of stress, I said, "This is like being the playground supervisor at a preschool for gifted children!" -- and that cemented my status as The Flipchart Queen, without whom no strategic planning day could take place.
These sessions were typically held in a meeting room at one of Vancouver's posh clubs, courtesy of one Board member or another -- and the thing about posh clubs is that they're likely to have some interesting art work on the walls. In one early session, when I was supposed to blend into the woodwork ("This isn't for the notes"), I enjoyed passing the time staring at a beautifully conceived brown- and purple-toned painting of a single garlic bulb on a canvas about 5-foot square.
Verrrrry interesting. I, too, am enchanted by the beauty of garlic bulbs, and a sprouting bulb starred in one of my first paintings in the 1980s:
Mine measured a mere 14" x 20." Suppose I'd made this on a huge canvas? Would it, too, have found patrons at a high-end club?
In the same era, I had a similar thought when we met in a top-line downtown hotel. Walking into the lobby, I was struck by a series of 6-8 framed drawings, strikingly similar to some I'd made myself of the intersections of philodendron stems and leaves. To fill its walls, the hotel had opted for giant drawings -- perhaps 3x5 feet each. When I got home, I pinned my three up in sequence -- each measuring a modest 10x14 inches:
The posh club/hotel scenario came back to me two summers ago, when I decided to paint over a very bad early landscape (colourful rocks and driftwood along the shore -- shown almost obliterated in the title photo above) for my experimental "Eyes on the Northwest". Even as I painted them out, I was drawn to some of the splashy segments of this failure:
Just suppose, instead of measuring 20" x 26", this eye-popping Fauvist shoreline -- or segments of it -- had measured 5 x 6 feet. Would it have found wall space at Vancouver's Four Seasons Hotel?
These kind of what-might-have-been questions are typical, I suppose, as one ages. Still, in this lifetime, it seems I've been destined to a certain uniqueness -- such as being the only currently living human, I'm sure, to slow down and squint at the 19th century engravings along the dimly lit hallways of the upper floors of Vancouver's Terminal City Club.
Whether or not Bigger is Better, let's return to the subject of garlic for an important culinary alert from JT, our family's garlic aficionado. For years, he's put up with the diminishing returns of soft-necked garlic, which produces many cloves per bulb, in ever-decreasing size until, near the centre, they're virtually unusable.
Now through the accident of an overheard conversation in the produce department, he is being abundantly supplied with the magnificent hard-necked variety -- apple-sized bulbs producing just 6-8 large cloves, each of which packs a whammy. The hard-necks -- a whole bulb and a view of the inner tough neck -- are shown on the left below, compared to the diminutive soft-necked bulb and cloves on the right.
Certainly, our family home has always been vampire-proof, as I'm sure is the case at Vancouver's preeminent tennis club, thanks to its Big Picture "Garlic on Duty in the East Meeting Room." (...or something like that...)
